Category: Broadband

The Northamptonshire Partnership has been formed with £1.5 million of funding. The partnerships aim is to bring broadband to communities and in particular businesses in areas of the county that currently have no broadband access.

The Broadband4Devon project has been started with the aiming of using Objective 2 funding to help bring broadband to 5,500 businesses throughout Devon.

At the end of each year, we look at how broadband has changed in the preceding twelve months and what new innovations we expect to see in the forthcoming year. We don't think it can be debated that 2003 has been a good year for broadband services with more users being able to get broadband services and more options being available for many be it via cable, ADSL or through some alternatively technologies such as wireless and satellite, but what are we expecting in 2004? Lower prices, new services and faster connections?

Ofcom has announced the low cost pricing for the licenced 5.8GHz radio spectrum. The low entry cost is designed to help push the use of this frequency band for back-haul and community broadband services.

The actnow Partnership is hosting a conference in February to promote broadband projects bringing together the public and private sector that can work together to deliver broadband solutions to rural areas. The conference includes speeches by Pierre Danon (Chief Executive, BT Retail) and Stephen Timms MP (E-Commerce Minister)

Ofcom in their press release of 16th December 2003 has decided that BT has 'Significant Market Power' (SMP) and requires regulating to increase the level of wholesale broadband competition.

Oftel shortly to become Ofcom has released its latest Internet and Broadband Brief. The data indicates that the UK has a total broadband user-base of over 3 million connections (includes cable, adsl, satellite and wireless).

This morning BT launched a campaign to offer cable broadband users a Voice-over-IP (VoIP) service which allows voice calls to be made via the use of their broadband connection. As with most services being launched, this is not actually anything new in technology terms--VoIP users are already widespread, but this is a move that could indicate the beginning of widescale individual VoIP deployment.

Radiant Networks, the company trying to deliver broadband through the use of mesh networks has entered administration. Ross Connock and Cedric Clapp are acting as joint administrators. Back in January this year, the company was working with BT Wholesale in a Mesh wireless trial in Wales.

BT is seeking support from wi-fi based wireless broadband operators to join together in supporting the UK's first "Wireless Broadband Week" at the end of January. During the week beginning 26 January, BT Openzone will be offering free 7-day trials of wireless broadband to raise public awareness of the benefits of broadband services, wi-fi in particular.